Let me introduce everyone to the new Indiegogo project called the Connected Pedal from the team of Connected Cycle. The Connected Pedal is the first autonomous smart pedal that has a built-in GPS tracker to prevent thief and automatically record your rides. Other nice features include an energy generator, built-in internet connection and activity tracker to round out the top key features. The pedals will come in five colors with a classic pedal package starting at $149. The setup to install the Connected Pedal looks easy. The Indiegogo project pages states that installing the pedal is just like any other pedal on any adult standard bike, it’s quick and easy. Start by removing your own pedals and use the provided coded wrench to install your new smart pedals (no mechanical skills required). Then download the Connected Cycle application on your smartphone and follow the instructions to make the easy peering.The Connected Pedal supports both Android and iOS 7 platforms.

No need to charge a battery or to carry your smartphone during your rides! The pedal is totally self governing and is able to run everywhere generating its own energy and using its own internet connection. All bike locations and rides statistics are automatically sent to the cloud and available through the Connected Cycle smartphone application. The smart pedal tracks and records route, speed curve, incline curve, and calories burned on every single trip. Without draining your phone battery.Even without your phone all your data can be retrieved through the Connected Cycle smartphone application at any time. Once you have left your bike somewhere, you can easily find the fastest way back to it through the Connected Cycle smartphone application. You are also instantly notified on your smartphone when someone moves your bike (trying to take off the lock for instance).

So far the Connected Pedal Indiegogo project has done $66,623 on a project goal of $50,000. Within a one day the project has flown pass its initial $50K goal on a projected 30 day fundraising effort. Like any new cool tech we blog about on TechGeniux the Connected Pedal is a unique device for people who need to track activity and protection from bike thief. Big selling point for me is the Connected Pedal daily calorie counter feature for cyclists who are health conscious yet enjoy a great time outdoors cycling.

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Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.
In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.
So today, SearchInk rebrands as omni:us, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: omni:us Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.
Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.
Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”
She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”
Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.
Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.
... Read More

VentureFriends, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of Homie and Weengs, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.
‘VentureFriends II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its original €20 million fund left off, with a remit to do seed investments in Greek startups and beyond that have global ambitions.
Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.
I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.
Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (formerly known as CityStasher) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.
Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.
Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.
The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that sold to Daimler in February 2017.
... Read More

Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.
In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.
So today, SearchInk rebrands as omni:us, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: omni:us Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.
Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.
Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”
She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”
Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.
Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.
... Read More

VentureFriends, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of Homie and Weengs, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.
‘VentureFriends II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its original €20 million fund left off, with a remit to do seed investments in Greek startups and beyond that have global ambitions.
Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.
I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.
Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (formerly known as CityStasher) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.
Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.
Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.
The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that sold to Daimler in February 2017.
... Read More

<p>Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.</p>
<p>In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.</p>
<p>So today, SearchInk rebrands as <a href="https://omnius.com/">omni:us</a>, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/omni/" target="_blank">omni:us <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.</p>
<p>Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.</p>
<p>Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”</p>
<p>She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.</p>
<p>Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.</p>
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:2mJPEYqXBVI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=2mJPEYqXBVI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:-BTjWOF_DHI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:-BTjWOF_DHI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a>
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<p><a href="http://www.venturefriends.vc/">VentureFriends</a>, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/20/homie/">Homie</a> and <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/23/weengs/">Weengs</a>, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.</p>
<p>‘<a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/venturefriends/" target="_blank">VentureFriends <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/03/venturefriends/">original €20 million fund</a> left off, with a remit to do seed investments in <a href="http://tech.eu/features/18161/athens-greece-startup-ecosystem-report/">Greek startups and beyond</a> that have global ambitions.</p>
<p>Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.</p>
<p>I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.</p>
<p>Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/09/citystasher/">formerly known as CityStasher</a>) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.</p>
<p>Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.</p>
<p>The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/27/daimler-close-to-buying-taxibeat-in-greece-for-around-43m/">sold to Daimler in February 2017</a>.</p>
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:2mJPEYqXBVI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=2mJPEYqXBVI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:-BTjWOF_DHI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:-BTjWOF_DHI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=01B29ewfaDk:0_C6WHnorhY:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a>
</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~4/01B29ewfaDk" height="1" width="1" alt="" />... Read More